Re: “Slim Pickens“ – A retriever can only fetch the ducks that are in the pond, and the Editors can only post those comics that have been submitted. If the community wants to see more CIDUs, OYs, and LOLs, then by all means, please send them in!
Oh, okay, I didn’t realize! I just took it for granite (that’s how we say it in Vermont) that the LOL and OY weekend collections would be mostly from whatever the editors or “multiple ciduers” come across in their personal comics browsing over the course of the week. Live and learn.
@ Dana Kay (3) – Back when Bill Bickel was managing the CIDU site solo, he was able to fill the LOLs and OYs nearly singlehandedly from his own reading list, because he read an enormous number of comics every day (dozens, perhaps even a hundred or more). I cannot speak for anyone else, but I personally just don’t have the time to read that many strips; my daily list is limited to about a dozen reliable features (which only very rarely produce a true CIDU), and a similar number of editorial cartoons (none of which would be suitable here).
I am currently traversing CIDU’s submission archive history, looking for items that may have been overlooked, but that is a limited resource. The best source we have are CIDU readers, but the trick is how to encourage people to submit their favorite comics on a regular basis, without sounding overbearing (or desperate, which we aren’t, at least not at the moment).
@Dana: Yes, the editors do post a lot of these, undoubtedly the majority. I posted 2 of the 4 today. But the editors aren’t a tightly organized bunch, like, say, the New York Times. (In fact, none of the current editors have ever met.) And we don’t have deadlines staring us in the face (like cartoonists who have a daily gag to do). Sometimes we find more that are OYs or LOLs in the recent comics. Sometimes we spend more time looking; other times we have more going on that week and don’t get around to it.
Just look at these weekend postings like a Christmas gift from, say, an 8 year old kid. Sometimes you will get something great, or sentimental. Sometimes you will say, “Uh, gee thanks!”.
Well, cool! Here’s one for ya! (My apologies for duplicated effort if you’ve already seen this in the submissions and have entered it in a future post.)
Suggestion of an OY (visual pun)
From: [my email]
Alias: Danny Boy
Category of suggestion : OY (image pun – “zebra crossing”)
Marian Kamensky’s page lists them as living in Vienna, Austria.
I note that in the UK there also seem to be puffin crossings and pelican crossings, both of which have different engineering. They likely don’t have armadillo crossings, because no armadillos have ever made it across.
Hi, Chak! Well, I have stepped back from heavy involvement with the editing board on CIDU. (Though you will be seeing a few more posts from me already queued or drafted.)
So that may explain the point you were questioning in Zbicyclist’s note. But I certainly remember our get-together in Hyde Park (at the Salonica diner I think), which included you, me, Zbicyclist (who indeed biked to Hyde Park from the far north), and Boise Ed and his wife Irene who had been touristing at the MSI that day.
I don’t want to sound like a grump, but I will. I’ve had a couple of times where I submitted CIDUs that were rejected because the editors thought they understood it. My position was that if it puzzled me, it might have others, so it should run just to see if readers concurred with the editors.
It’s not a huge amount of effort to send in a submission, but it is effort. So I don’t anymore. I’m happy to read the site and occasionally post followup strips on a theme.
I do understand that the editors are volunteers doing the best they can, and I do not the job.
Brian,
Please don’t stop submitting. If things got lost, I’m sure it was inadvertent. As one of the editors, I’ve often posted to the other editors wondering if something that had puzzled me was worth posting; after a few iterations, I realized that, as you suggest, the fact that someone was puzzled should be sufficient, and I’m sure the other editors feel the same way.
The problem of stuff getting lost IS real: we don’t have a formal workflow, so unless someone says “I got this one”, it’s easy for it to get missed. I’m not sure how to fix that in a reasonably lightweight way, alas. The opposite also happens: I see a submission that I want to handle and get busy and then wonder “Did someone do this already?” That’s at least easy to handle by me asking the others!
I’ve been told that it’s pronounced “Zebbra Crossing” in England. I suppose it might be because it starts with the letter Zed. So maybe there’s no place on earth where it’s called a “Zeebra crossing.”
Joke that only works with the American pronunciation: What is a zebra? An over-the-shoulder boulder holder.
@ Brian (11) – Your unpleasant experience is one reason why I am going back through the archive. Right at the moment we aren’t getting enough incoming submissions to independently maintain the queue (without extra material added by the editors), so it makes sense to use everything we do get. If a reader thought a comic was significant enough to do the work to submit it, then it should be worth posting; if not as a CIDU, then as an LOL or OY.
Unfortunately, the concept of “rejecting” CIDUs goes back to Bill himself. He would often repond to e-mailed submissions with the explanation, rather than posting the comic. Bill appeared to be uncomfortable with the idea of posting a CIDU that would get solved too fast (the classic “done in one” conundrum); when that happened anyway, he would sometimes post a “bonus CIDU”, in an effort to make sure that we readers still had something else to talk about.
Although this strategy might have been a practical way to encourage higher comment volume, it presumes an inexhaustible supply of comic material (see @4 above), and a much higher level of effort than we as part-time editors can commit to maintaining posts. I have no idea how much time Bill spent on reading comics and maintaining CIDU, but it sometimes seemed as if he spent 25 hours a day at his computer.
I LOL’d at the zebra crossing. It’s even funnier when my town is experimenting with raised pedestrian crossings (crosswalk/speed hump) near our high school.
“there’s no clue why they would need him to bridge the road and couldn’t cross on their own.”
How do they get deer to cross at deer crossing signs?
:-P
I am reminded of a sketch I saw on TV many years ago, of someone walking across a British/European zebra crossing, hearing piano notes as they go. If I’m not making this up, I think they even danced around making music. Not surprisingly Google is of no help here…
That dog park one is rather dark. Imagine watching your family member spontaneously explode and die right before you.
Please don’t stop submitting. If things got lost, I’m sure it was inadvertent.
Not lost, noped. As I said, it’s their show and their prerogative to do so. But I thought I’d let them know my perspective, if I didn’t previously. I can’t recall.
@ Brian (17) – I don’t know any of the details about that submission, but I’m very sorry about what happened. If you should ever run into another comic that is worth sending, please rest assured that I will make sure that it gets posted appropriately.
Let’s test that hypothesis about Venn diagram comics with the currently penultimate PBF:
… Personally, I think TMCM makes a good case, but YMMV.
Comics I Don't Understand 
Seems like …
Re: “Slim Pickens“ – A retriever can only fetch the ducks that are in the pond, and the Editors can only post those comics that have been submitted. If the community wants to see more CIDUs, OYs, and LOLs, then by all means, please send them in!
Oh, okay, I didn’t realize! I just took it for granite (that’s how we say it in Vermont) that the LOL and OY weekend collections would be mostly from whatever the editors or “multiple ciduers” come across in their personal comics browsing over the course of the week. Live and learn.
@ Dana Kay (3) – Back when Bill Bickel was managing the CIDU site solo, he was able to fill the LOLs and OYs nearly singlehandedly from his own reading list, because he read an enormous number of comics every day (dozens, perhaps even a hundred or more). I cannot speak for anyone else, but I personally just don’t have the time to read that many strips; my daily list is limited to about a dozen reliable features (which only very rarely produce a true CIDU), and a similar number of editorial cartoons (none of which would be suitable here).
I am currently traversing CIDU’s submission archive history, looking for items that may have been overlooked, but that is a limited resource. The best source we have are CIDU readers, but the trick is how to encourage people to submit their favorite comics on a regular basis, without sounding overbearing (or desperate, which we aren’t, at least not at the moment).
@Dana: Yes, the editors do post a lot of these, undoubtedly the majority. I posted 2 of the 4 today. But the editors aren’t a tightly organized bunch, like, say, the New York Times. (In fact, none of the current editors have ever met.) And we don’t have deadlines staring us in the face (like cartoonists who have a daily gag to do). Sometimes we find more that are OYs or LOLs in the recent comics. Sometimes we spend more time looking; other times we have more going on that week and don’t get around to it.
Just look at these weekend postings like a Christmas gift from, say, an 8 year old kid. Sometimes you will get something great, or sentimental. Sometimes you will say, “Uh, gee thanks!”.
Well, cool! Here’s one for ya! (My apologies for duplicated effort if you’ve already seen this in the submissions and have entered it in a future post.)
Suggestion of an OY (visual pun)
From: [my email]
Alias: Danny Boy
Category of suggestion : OY (image pun – “zebra crossing”)
Artist: Marian Kamensky (male, incidentally)
Website : https://www.toonpool.com/artists/marian%20kamensky_12400
Comment: Imperfect, I guess, since there’s no clue why they would need him to bridge the road and couldn’t cross on their own.
“
there’s no clue why they would need him to bridge the road and couldn’t cross on their own.”Oh, part of his job is stopping the vehicular traffic at that part of the road! (As is always the function of a zebbra crossing.)
zbcyclist, Isn’t Mitch4 still editing? I know you met him.
From Wikipedia: “A zebra crossing (British English) or a marked crosswalk (American English) is a pedestrian crossing marked with white stripes (zebra markings).”
Marian Kamensky’s page lists them as living in Vienna, Austria.
I note that in the UK there also seem to be puffin crossings and pelican crossings, both of which have different engineering. They likely don’t have armadillo crossings, because no armadillos have ever made it across.
Hi, Chak! Well, I have stepped back from heavy involvement with the editing board on CIDU. (Though you will be seeing a few more posts from me already queued or drafted.)
So that may explain the point you were questioning in Zbicyclist’s note. But I certainly remember our get-together in Hyde Park (at the Salonica diner I think), which included you, me, Zbicyclist (who indeed biked to Hyde Park from the far north), and Boise Ed and his wife Irene who had been touristing at the MSI that day.
I don’t want to sound like a grump, but I will. I’ve had a couple of times where I submitted CIDUs that were rejected because the editors thought they understood it. My position was that if it puzzled me, it might have others, so it should run just to see if readers concurred with the editors.
It’s not a huge amount of effort to send in a submission, but it is effort. So I don’t anymore. I’m happy to read the site and occasionally post followup strips on a theme.
I do understand that the editors are volunteers doing the best they can, and I do not the job.
Brian,
Please don’t stop submitting. If things got lost, I’m sure it was inadvertent. As one of the editors, I’ve often posted to the other editors wondering if something that had puzzled me was worth posting; after a few iterations, I realized that, as you suggest, the fact that someone was puzzled should be sufficient, and I’m sure the other editors feel the same way.
The problem of stuff getting lost IS real: we don’t have a formal workflow, so unless someone says “I got this one”, it’s easy for it to get missed. I’m not sure how to fix that in a reasonably lightweight way, alas. The opposite also happens: I see a submission that I want to handle and get busy and then wonder “Did someone do this already?” That’s at least easy to handle by me asking the others!
I’ve been told that it’s pronounced “Zebbra Crossing” in England. I suppose it might be because it starts with the letter Zed. So maybe there’s no place on earth where it’s called a “Zeebra crossing.”
Joke that only works with the American pronunciation: What is a zebra? An over-the-shoulder boulder holder.
@ Brian (11) – Your unpleasant experience is one reason why I am going back through the archive. Right at the moment we aren’t getting enough incoming submissions to independently maintain the queue (without extra material added by the editors), so it makes sense to use everything we do get. If a reader thought a comic was significant enough to do the work to submit it, then it should be worth posting; if not as a CIDU, then as an LOL or OY.
Unfortunately, the concept of “rejecting” CIDUs goes back to Bill himself. He would often repond to e-mailed submissions with the explanation, rather than posting the comic. Bill appeared to be uncomfortable with the idea of posting a CIDU that would get solved too fast (the classic “done in one” conundrum); when that happened anyway, he would sometimes post a “bonus CIDU”, in an effort to make sure that we readers still had something else to talk about.
Although this strategy might have been a practical way to encourage higher comment volume, it presumes an inexhaustible supply of comic material (see @4 above), and a much higher level of effort than we as part-time editors can commit to maintaining posts. I have no idea how much time Bill spent on reading comics and maintaining CIDU, but it sometimes seemed as if he spent 25 hours a day at his computer.
I LOL’d at the zebra crossing. It’s even funnier when my town is experimenting with raised pedestrian crossings (crosswalk/speed hump) near our high school.
“
there’s no clue why they would need him to bridge the road and couldn’t cross on their own.”How do they get deer to cross at deer crossing signs?
:-P
I am reminded of a sketch I saw on TV many years ago, of someone walking across a British/European zebra crossing, hearing piano notes as they go. If I’m not making this up, I think they even danced around making music. Not surprisingly Google is of no help here…
That dog park one is rather dark. Imagine watching your family member spontaneously explode and die right before you.
Please don’t stop submitting. If things got lost, I’m sure it was inadvertent.
Not lost, noped. As I said, it’s their show and their prerogative to do so. But I thought I’d let them know my perspective, if I didn’t previously. I can’t recall.
@ Brian (17) – I don’t know any of the details about that submission, but I’m very sorry about what happened. If you should ever run into another comic that is worth sending, please rest assured that I will make sure that it gets posted appropriately.
Let’s test that hypothesis about Venn diagram comics with the currently penultimate PBF:
…
Personally, I think TMCM makes a good case, but YMMV.